Tag: education

Did you ever notice how everyone today seems to be singing the praises of multitasking? Articles, blogs, and books are completely dedicated to the “art” of doing several things at once as if it were actually a good thing.

I’ve been thinking. If there was one thing I could change about the beginning of our homeschool journey…. okay… strike that. (Because, unfortunately, there’s way more than one thing I’d change.) Okay, let’s rephrase that… one of the things I wish I had done as a new homeschool parent was to take the time to read.

Seems simple enough, right? So simple, in fact, that you may be wondering why I now feel it would have been so important for me then.

Just what exactly is considered to be educational by most people?

– Anything which is covered in standardized testing and the Common Core

Makes sense, right? It’s all very straightforward…

…or is it?

An important question here is who decides what is considered to be educational? That’s easy….school boards and the government. Oh, boy. That’s a problem for me. Our government can’t handle running the country- the job we hired them for. Why would we throw something else at them for them to control, particularly, our children’s futures? I don’t know about you, but that’s a problem for me.

This brings me to my next point…what about the interests of our children that don’t fit into a neat little box? For example, Arianna loves watching makeup tutorials. This has evolved into her using my other kids as canvases for her own theatrical makeup experiments. She’s also turned it into a business; she charges a quarter for face painting. More recently, she’s started recording her own makeup tutorials and uploading them onto YouTube. Would the school board or NEA consider this to be educational? I can’t speak for them, but I doubt it. Has she learned through this? Absolutely.

You see, my problem with the word ”educational” has nothing to do with learning. My concern is this: shouldn’t anything that our child immerses herself in and surrounds herself with be just as important as any mainstream educational objective?

Another issue is something I may have caused myself with my children. Since I was always so concerned with fulfilling state regulations, I was constantly focusing on those schoolish subjects that my children had no interest in and devaluing their true interests because I thought they weren’t educational. There’s that word again.

Being a product of the public school system, I had these same views so ingrained into me that I contributed to my children believing that the things they most wanted to do weren’t worth it.

Thankfully, I’ve come to my senses. If a child is learning while they’re doing something, anything, it is educational.

Last week, London and Caollin were playing ”restaurant” for hours- making menus, taking orders, setting tables- the whole shebang. They were having so much fun.
The last straw came when London, who’s eight, came up to me while playing and said,
”Mommy, is this educational?”

I was floored!

What have I done? My little girl was more concerned with that than with enjoying herself. That’s when I decided to never use the e-word in front of my kids again. (2016- I do use that word now, but less frequently!)

Are my kids learning? Every single day. But that’s not what I want to focus on anymore. I want to focus on living.